aalto1 untyped-item.component.html
Can anyone be an angel? Consumers’ critical discursive strategies in navigating femvertising - Case Victoria’s Secret
Loading...
URL
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Business |
Master's thesis
Electronic archive copy is available via Aalto Thesis Database.
Authors
Date
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
40+ 15
Series
Abstract
The popularity of woke culture, socially progressive and brand activism matters have increased in the 21th century, influencing brands´ marketing strategies. Companies have started to adopt feminist values, and create new progressive ways to market their products. As some customers are praising companies for being socially progressive, others have a hard time accepting the changes. The purpose of this paper is to analyse consumers' critical discursive strategies to Victoria´s Secret´s femvertising and socially progressive rebranding from August 2023 to May 2024. The promotion of body positivity and inclusion were studied by analysing 33 687 social media comments. The data indicates that Victoria´s Secret´s feminist brand activism has divided consumers into three different types of critical discursive strategies: nostalgia (remedicing about the past and preferring things to stay as they were), perceived inauthenticity (finding the marketing inauthentic, either because it does not fit the old brand image, it is believed to be caused by outside pressure or because of the unequal portrayal of plus-size models) and value conflict (conflict between the new brand values and consumers own personal values).